* c. 5400 BC: Irrigation and the beginning of the Sumerian civilization in Southern Iraq.

Sumerian civilization took form in the Uruk period ( 4th millennium BC ), continuing into the Jemdat Nasr and Early Dynastic periods.

" In Uruk, in southern Mesopotamia, Sumerian civilization seems to have reached its creative peak.

Various representations of wrestlers has been found on stone slabs recovered from the Sumerian civilization.

Speculations regarding the original homeland have centered on the Indus Valley Civilization or on Elam ( whose Elamite language was spoken in the hills to the east of the ancient Sumerian civilization with whom the Indus Valley Civilization traded and shared domesticated species ) in an Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis, but results have not been convincing.

Frequently, efforts to look for deeper linguistic origins of these languages will also attempt to integrate them into attested extinct languages of Europe, such as the Etruscan language of Northern Italy, the Ligurian language of Italy, the Lemnian language of the Aegean Island of Lemnos, the Minoan language aka Linear A of ancient Crete, the Sumerian language once spoken in Mesopotamia ( which is the oldest attested written language ), the language of the Indus River Valley civilization, the Elamite language of Iran, and the Hurrian language and Hattic language of Anatolia.

Soon after the Sumerian civilization began, the Nile River valley of ancient Egypt was unified under the Pharaohs in the 4th millennium BC, and civilization quickly spread through the Fertile Crescent to the west coast of the Mediterranean Sea and throughout the Levant.

In Sumerian mythology, a me ( Sumerian, conventionally pronounced ) or ñe or parşu ( Akkadian, ) is one of the decrees of the gods foundational to those social institutions, religious practices, technologies, behaviors, mores, and human conditions that make civilization, as the Sumerians understood it, possible.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, who was an ancient Sumerian king ( ca. 3000 BC ), is our first detailed written evidence of human civilization.

Some art assets also existed in the game files for a Sumerian civilization led by Gilgamesh and they were used by the modding community to introduce the Sumerians into the game.

Adapa was a mortal from a godly lineage, a son of Ea ( Enki in Sumerian ), the god of wisdom and of the ancient city of Eridu, who brought the arts of civilization to that city ( from Dilmun, according to some versions ).

It was followed by the Sumerian civilization.

The two-headed eagle can be found in the archaeological remains of the Sumerian civilization and through the Hittite civilization, dating from a period that ranges from the 20th century BC to the 7th century BC.

This civilization is recognized as the oldest in Iran and was largely contemporary with its neighbour, Sumerian civilization, the oldest in the world, which began around 3400 BC.

Successors to Sumerian civilization including the Babylonians, Assyrians, and Persians continued to use these groupings.

It spanned several civilizations ; from Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, and Babylonian.

For example, from Sumerian Literature we can see the same Genre that we see in the Book of Lamentations of the Funeral Dirge and Lament reflected in the Sumerian Lament: Lamentation over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur which depicts the destruction of the cities of Sumer and Ur.

* Control of the " holy " city of Nippur and its temple priesthood generally meant hegemony over most of Sumer, as listed on the Sumerian King List ; at one point, the Nippur priesthood conferred the title of queen of Sumer on Kugbau, a popular taverness from nearby Kish ( who was later deified as Kubaba ).

Following the collapse of the last Sumerian " Ur-III " dynasty at the hands of the Elamites ( 2002 BC traditional, 1940 BC short ), the Amorites, another Semitic people, gradually gained control over most of southern Mesopotamia, where they formed a series of small kingdoms, while the Assyrians reasserted their independence in the north.

The bewildering number and variety of phonetic values that signs could have in Sumerian led to an unfortunate detour in understanding the language – a Paris-based orientalist, Joseph Halévy, argued from 1874 onward that Sumerian was not a natural language, but rather a secret code ( a cryptolect ), and for over a decade the leading Assyriologists battled over this issue.

Following this period, the region of Mesopotamia seems to have come under the sway of a Sumerian conqueror from Adab, Lugal-Ane-mundu, ruling over Uruk, Ur, and Lagash.

At the Sumerian Royal Cemetery of Ur, a " complete rubble dome built over a timber centring " was found among the chambers of the tombs for Meskalamdug and Puabi, dating to around 2500 BC.

Ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, and Chinese civilizations began to use such symbols over, developing them into logographic writing systems.

Two Elamite dynasties said to have exercised brief control over parts of Sumer in very early times include Awan and Hamazi ; and likewise, several of the stronger Sumerian rulers, such as Eannatum of Lagash and Lugal-anne-mundu of Adab, are recorded as temporarily dominating Elam.

Sumerian Records spent over a year trying to reissue these records before Rise ultimately acquired the rights.

Already the earliest known script, Sumerian cuneiform, includes many cases of character combinations that over the script's history gradually evolve from a ligature into an independent character in its own right.

Nabu is accorded the office of patron of the scribes, taking over from the Sumerian goddess Nisaba.

The mes were originally collected by Enlil and then handed over to the guardianship of Enki who was to broker them out to the various Sumerian centers beginning with his own city of Eridu and continuing with Ur, Meluhha, and Dilmun.

The Lament for Ur, or Lamentation over the city of Ur is a Sumerian lament composed around the time of the fall of Ur to the Elamites and the end of the city's third dynasty ( c. 2000 BC ).

Edward Chiera published other tablets CBS 3878, 6889, 6905, 7975, 8079, 10227, 13911 and 14110 in " Sumerian texts of varied contents " in 1934, which combined with tablets CBS 3901, 3927, 8023, 9316, 11078 and 14234 to further restore the myth, calling it a " Lamentation over the city of Ur ".

The Afro-Asiatic Coptic language of ancient Egypt is one of the two oldest written language on Earth ( the other being the Sumerian language ) dating in written form to approximately 3000 BCE, and the Semitic Akkadian language was also attested in writing from a very early date ( ca.

Delitzsch's student, Arno Poebel, published a grammar with the same title, Grundzüge der sumerischen Grammatik, in 1923, and for 50 years it would be the standard for students studying Sumerian.

Mesopotamian religion refers to the religious beliefs and practices followed by the Sumerian and Akkadian ( Assyrian / Babylonian ) peoples living in Mesopotamia ( around the area of modern Iraq ) that dominated the region for a period of 4200 years from the fourth millennium BC to proximately the 3rd century AD.

Enshakushanna was a king of Uruk in the later 3rd millennium BC who is named on the Sumerian king list, which states his reign to have been 60 years.

Temples often predated the creation of the urban settlement and grew from small one room structures to elaborate multiacre complexes across the 2, 500 years of Sumerian history.

The history of international relations can be traced thousands of years ago ; Barry Buzan and Richard Little, for example, consider the interaction of ancient Sumerian city-states, starting in 3, 500 BC, as the first fully-fledged international system.

The standard ancient Sumerian King List ( WB 444 ) lists various mythical antediluvian kings and gives them reigns of several tens of thousands of years.

The first Sumerian king Alulim, at Eridu, is described as reigning for 28, 800 years, followed by several later kings of similar periods.

According to museum officials the looters concentrated on the heart of the exhibition: " the Warka Vase, a Sumerian alabaster piece more than 5, 000 years old ; a bronze Uruk statue from the Akkadian period, also 5, 000 years old, which weighs 660 pounds ; and the headless statue of Entemena.

Age claims for the earliest eight Sumerian kings in the major recension of the Sumerian King List were in units and fractions of shar ( 3, 600 years ) and totaled 67 shar or 241, 200 years.

* The horoscopes found in Sumerian / Babylonian tablets do not contain sufficient astronomical data ; consequently, they have solutions every 30 – 50 years on the time axis and are therefore useless for purposes of dating ;

He found waterways dating back 13, 000 years from the Sumerian period to the days of the Turkish Republic.

* Gilgamesh reigned for 126 years according to the Sumerian king list.

Elulu is listed as the third king of the first dynasty of Ur on the Sumerian king list, which states he reigned for 25 years.

In recent years, they have enriched their sound with elements of musical theatre, progressive and symphonic metal, developing and writing projects such as the Metal Opera " The House of Atreus " ( based on Oresteia and the Greek myth related to the Atreides ) in 1999 / 2000 and the soundtrack for an imaginary movie Visions of Eden ( A Barbaric Romantic Movie of the Mind ) aka " The Lilith Project " ( based on the Sumerian legend of Lilith ) in 2006.

The Sumerian king list tells us that Utu-hengal had reigned for seven years ( or 426, or 26 in other copies ), although only one year-name for him is known from records, that of his accession, suggesting a shorter reign.

According to the Sumerian kings list, " In the army of Gutium, at first no king was famous ; they were their own kings and ruled thus for 3 years.

He ruled for 25 ( or 34 ) years according to the Sumerian king list.

Kubaba ( in the Weidner or Esagila Chronicle ; Sumerian: Kug-Bau ) is the only queen on the Sumerian King List, which states she reigned for 100 years – roughly in the Early Dynastic III period ( ca.

Jim Marrs, whose work was used as a source by Oliver Stone in his film JFK, cites Quigley in his book Rule By Secrecy, which describes a conspiracy linking the Milner Group, Skull and Bones, the Trilateral Commission, the Bavarian Illuminati, the Knights Templar, and aliens who posed as the Sumerian gods thousands of years ago.